Phase 14: Audio, UI and Polish

This phase is still ahead.

Ships

v0.14.0

Lesson

Game feel, UX and accessibility

Depends on

Phase 13

• Owner Choose music and sound sources (generated, commissioned, or licensed or CC0 packs) and confirm the licenses.
• Audio buses (master, music, effects, UI, ambient) with volume settings.
• Music per zone and for combat with crossfades, plus ambient loops (forest, town, wind in the ruins).
• Sound effects: footsteps by terrain, hits, abilities, UI, loot, level up, quest complete and the whisper ping.
• Audio credits and licenses listed in the game and on the website.

• Settings menu: window mode, integer scale, vsync, FPS cap, audio, gameplay, chat filters and UI scale.
• Key rebinding with conflict detection, saved to the user config.
• Decision Controller support for v1, or deferred.

• First-time tips (movement, targeting, chat, quests) that can be turned off.
• Clear messages for every connection and login failure.

• Shapes as well as colors for hostility and item quality, text size options, a screen shake toggle and reduced flashing.

• Game feel pass: hit feedback, footstep dust and smooth UI transitions.
• Performance: 60 FPS at 1080p on a five-year-old integrated-graphics laptop with 30 players on screen; profile and fix.
• Every placeholder asset and placeholder string is gone.
• All player-facing strings go through Godot’s translation system, with English as the only shipped language.

• docs/walkthroughs/phase-14-polish.md: audio architecture, settings persistence and performance profiling.
• Devlog draft, release notes, tag v0.14.0 and publish builds.

• Owner Play for 30 minutes and sign off on sound and feel.
• Every setting persists and applies without a restart where possible.
• The performance target is met and recorded in docs/perf/phase-14.md.